This interview has been reprinted with the permission of Scholastic Publishers and Rose Carrano Public Relations.

What are the physical symptoms of grief?

The most common ones are a lot like depression: lethargy, fatigue, inertia, headaches, stomach upset, nausea, loss of or greater appetite, changed sleep habits, difficulty concentrating and difficulty with short term memory.

What can we do to reassure teens that it's okay to talk about death?

You can be a model. If you name it, face it, speak it, then teens will be less afraid too -- less afraid to think about it themselves and approach you without the worry of burdening or overwhelming you. You can also ask open-ended questions such as, "What is it like since _______________ died?" and then not demand answers. You can listen without trying to fix it or explain it away.

What is the most difficult aspect of teen grief in school communities?

For the closest to the loss, the most difficult aspect is the sense of isolation, being different from everyone else and out of the stream of life. For the rest, it is not knowing what to say or do for the ones who've had the loss. That discomfort arises because any death reminds all of us of what we try so hard to deny - that we will all die. We're frightened both of the reality of death and also of the intensity of the feelings we sense we might touch upon in ourselves and the bereaved.

Have teenagers you've worked with come up with unique ways to remember a loved one?

Any way to remember a loved one is unique to a griever. Many, many people plant trees in memory of someone who has died, yet for each mourner that tree has unique remembrances. The most important thing is not what you do to remember someone but that you do it and do it in a way that is meaningful to you.

How can teens create a balance between remembering and moving forward?

This is such an important question and the crux of the work of grief. I approach it from the griever's inner mental world outward - not the other way around. First we deal with all the feelings and out of this comes the emotional freedom to find a comfortable place for the memories, a comfortable way to relate to the memory of that person who died. Then, of its own accord, comes rejoining more fully with ongoing life.

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